1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to restoring deleted volumes in a storage system.
2. Description of the Related Art
As computer memory storage and data bandwidth increase, so does the amount and complexity of data that businesses daily manage. Large-scale distributed storage systems, such as data centers, typically run many business operations. A datacenter, which may also be referred to as a server room, is a centralized repository, either physical or virtual, for the storage, management, and dissemination of data pertaining to one or more businesses. A distributed storage system may be coupled to client computers interconnected by one or more networks. If any portion of the distributed storage system has poor performance, company operations may be impaired. A distributed storage system therefore maintains high standards for data availability and high-performance functionality.
Software applications, such as a logical volume manager or a disk array manager, provide a means of allocating space on mass-storage arrays. In addition, this software allows a system administrator to create units of storage groups including logical volumes. Storage virtualization provides an abstraction of logical storage from physical storage in order to access logical storage without end-users identifying physical storage.
To support storage virtualization, a volume manager performs input/output (I/O) redirection by translating incoming I/O requests using logical addresses from end-users into new requests using addresses associated with physical locations in the storage devices. As some storage devices may include additional address translation mechanisms, such as address translation layers which may be used in solid state storage devices, the translation from a logical address to another address mentioned above may not represent the only or final address translation.
For many storage systems, volume operations may be performed on a frequent basis. For example, large numbers of volumes may be created and deleted on a daily basis. From time to time, a user may inadvertently delete a volume and then realize later that they wish to restore the volume. However, in conventional storage systems, once a volume is deleted, it is impossible to restore the deleted volume.
In view of the above, systems and methods for allowing deleted volumes to be restored.